MUSKOGEE, a city and the county-seat of Muskogee county,
Oklahoma, U.S.A., about 3 m. W. by S. of the confluence of the
Verdigris, Neosho (or Grand) and Arkansas rivers, and about
130 m. E.N.E. of Oklahoma City. Pop. (1900), 4154; (1907),
14,418, of whom 4298 were negroes and 332 Indians; (1910), 25,278.
It is served by the St Louis & San Francisco, the Midland
Valley, the Missouri, Kansas & Texas, and the Missouri,
Oklahoma & Gulf railways. Fort Gibson (pop. in. 1910, 1344),
about 5 m. N.E. on the Neosho, near its confluence with the
Arkansas, is the head of steam-boat navigation of the
Arkansas; ift is the site of a former government fort and of a
national cemetery. Muskogee is the seat of Spaulding Institute
(M.E. Church, South) and Nazareth Institute (Roman Catholic),
and at Bacone, about 2 m. north-east, is Indian University
(Baptist, opened 1884). Muskogee is the commercial centre of
an agricultural and stock-raising region, is surrounded by
an oil and natural gas field of considerable extent producing
a high grade of petroleum, and has a large oil refinery, railway
shops (of the Midland Valley and the Missouri, Oklahoma &
Gulf railways), cotton gins, cotton compresses, and cotton-seed
oil and flour mills. The municipality owns and operates the
water-works, the water supply being drawn from the Neosho
river. Muskogee was founded about 1870, and became the
chief town of the Creek Nation (Muskogee) and the metropolis
and administrative centre of the former Indian Territory,
being the headquarters of the Union Indian Agency to the
Five Civilized Tribes, of the United States (Dawes) Commission
to the Five Civilized Tribes, and of a Federal land office for
the allotment of lands to the Creeks and Cherokees, and the
seat of a Federal Court. The city was chartered in 1898; its
area was enlarged in 1908, increasing its population.